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A POET'S DAUGHTER

A POET'S DAUGHTER

BY F. G. HALLECK

Written for Miss ***, at the request of her father.

'A LADY asks the minstrel's rhyme.'

A lady asks? There was a time

When, musical as play-bells' chime

To wearied boy,

That sound would summon dreams sublime
Of pride and joy.

But now the spell hath lost its sway
Life's first-born fancies first decay,

Gone are the plumes and pennons gay

Of young romance;

There linger but her ruins gray

And broken lance.

"This is no world,' so Hotspur said,

For tilting lips' and 'mammets' made,
No longer in love's myrtle shade

My thoughts recline

I'm busy in the cotton trade,

And sugar line.

"Tis youth, 't is beauty asks-the green

And growing leaves of seventeen

Are round her; and, half hid, half seen,
A violet flower:

A POET'S DAUGHTER.

Nursed by the virtues she hath been
From childhood's hour.'

Blind passion's picture-yet for this
We woo the life-long bridal kiss,
And blend our every hope of bliss
With her's we love;

Her's-who admired a serpent's hiss
In Eden's grove!

Beauty-the fading rainbow's pride,
Youth-'t was the charm of her who died
At dawn, and, by her coffin's side,
A grandsire stands;

Age-strengthened, like the oak, storm-tried,
Of mountain lands.

Youth's coffin-hush the tale it tells!

Be silent, memory's funeral bells!

Lone in my heart, her home, it dwells,
Untold till death,

And where the grave-mound greenly swells
O'er buried faith.

'But she who asks has rank and power,
And treasured gold, and bannered tower,
A kingdom for her marriage dower,
Broad seas and lands;

Armies her train, a throne her bower,
A queen commands!'

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A POET'S DAUGHTER.

A queen? Earth's regal suns have set.
Where perished Marie Antoinette?
Where's Bordeaux's mother? where the jet-
Black Haytian dame?
And Lusitania's coronet?
And Angouleme?

Empires to-day are upside down,
The castle kneels before the town,
The monarch fears a printer's frown,
A brick-bat's range-

Give me, in preference to a crown,
Five shillings change.

'Another asks-though first among
The good, the beautiful, the young,
The birthright of a spell more strong
Than these hath brought her;
She is your kinswoman in song,
A poet's daughter!'

A poet's daughter? Could I claim
The consanguinity of fame,
Veins of my intellectual frame,

Your blood would glow

Proudly, to sing that gentlest name
Of aught below!

A poet's daughter! Dearer word

Lip hath not spoke, nor listener heard,

TO A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER

Fit theme for song of bee and bird

From morn till even,

And wind-harp, by the breathing stirred
Of star-lit heaven.

My spirit's wings are weak-the fire
Poetic comes but to expire.

Her name needs not my humble lyre
To bid it live;

She hath already from her sire

All bard can give.

TO A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER.

BY O. W. HOLMES

WAN Visaged thing! thy virgin leaf
To me looks more than deadly pale,-
Unknowing what may stain thee yet—
A poem or a tale.

Who can thy unborn meaning scan?
Can Seer or Sibyl read thee now?
No-seek to trace the fate of man
Writ on his infant brow.

Love may light on thy snowy cheek,
And shake his Eden breathing plumes,
Then shalt thou tell how Lelia smiles,
Or Angelina blooms.

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TO A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER

Satire may lift his bearded lance,
Forestalling Time's slow moving scytoe,
And, scattered on thy little field,
Disjointed bards may writhe.

Perchance a vision of the night,
Some grizzled spectre, gaunt and thin,
Or sheeted corpse may stalk along,
Or skeleton may grin!

If it should be in pensive hour,

Some sorrow moving theme I try,
Ah maiden, how thy tears will fall,
For all I doom to die!

But if in merry mood I touch

Thy leaves, then shall the sight of thee

Sow smiles as thick on rosy lips,

As ripples on the sea.

The Weekly press shall gladly stoop
To bind thee up among its sheaves;
The Daily steal thy shining ore,

To gild its leaden leaves.

Thou hast no tongue, yet thou canst speak.
Till distant shores shall hear the sound,
Thou hast no life, yet thou canst breathe
Fresh life on all around.